Two articles to ponder on this March for Life day (I intended to hyperlink “March for Life,” but the site is down as of 11:30pm Thursday. Hope it didn’t get hacked).
Life size 8 week fetus–wikimedia commons
1. “Catholic” Health Initiative’s lawyer argued in court that a fetus is not a person. CHI runs St. Thomas More Hospital in Colorado, where a husband claims malpractice led to the wrongful death of his wife and unborn twins. CHI, in attempting to win the case, argued “[The court] should not overturn the long-standing rule in Colorado that the term ‘person,’ as is used in the Wrongful Death Act, encompasses only individuals born alive. Colorado state courts define ‘person’ under the Act to include only those born alive. Therefore Plaintiffs cannot maintain wrongful death claims based on two unborn fetuses.” E.g., an organization calling itself “Catholic” wants courts to reject the fact that the unborn are persons.
2. A post at Salon.com is headlined: “So what if abortion ends life?” The subtitle is “I believe that life starts at conception. And it’s never stopped me from being pro-choice.” “Here’s the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal. That’s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always.”
Some paragraphs could make you forget you’re reading from a pro-choicer: “When we try to act like a pregnancy doesn’t involve human life, we wind up drawing stupid semantic lines in the sand: first trimester abortion vs. second trimester vs. late term, dancing around the issue trying to decide if there’s a single magic moment when a fetus becomes a person. Are you human only when you’re born? Only when you’re viable outside of the womb? Are you less of a human life when you look like a tadpole than when you can suck on your thumb?”
Later, though, an equality is drawn between taking the life of the unborn and drone strikes (disgusting), the death penalty (not intrinsically evil, though as JPII says hardly necessary in most places), euthanasia (disgusting), and removing life support (can be done in certain situations). There isn’t much logic presented to make these connections, other than the author is attempting to prove the argument of “we kill some people, so why can’t we kill babies too if we want?”
If you ever wondered whether EVERY SINGLE PERSON needs to pray for a conversion of our culture, reflect on the fact that a fellow human being holds the following opinion:
If by some random fluke I learned today I was pregnant, you bet your [expletive deleted] I’d have an abortion. I’d have the World’s Greatest Abortion…I would put the life of a mother over the life of a fetus every single time — even if I still need to acknowledge my conviction that the fetus is indeed a life. A life worth sacrificing.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us!